Saturday 15^th October 2022 saw the launch of the East Anglian Traditional Music Trust’s (EATMT) Vaughan Williams Folk Project – a National Lottery Heritage Fund project which runs until September 2023. 

Over 40 keen Ralph Vaughan Williams fans joined us at Redwoods Library, Red Gables, Stowmarket, with Project Co-ordinator, Nicky Stockman, Essex singer Sue Cubbin and her fellow band members “Potiphar’s Apprentices”. 

Nicky Stockman welcomed everyone and introduced the whole project including the showing of a short film recently made promoting the Youth Mentorship programme – also part of the project.  EATMT are welcoming applicants for this programme until Monday 31^st October 2022 for 16-25 year old musicians who are keen to get involved.   Youth Mentorship leader Finn Collinson (straight from touring!) also joined us for the afternoon and Jake Lee Savage, our sound recordist for the project also joined us enabling this event to be recorded. This event can now be viewed via our Youtube page.

Sue Cubbin, Essex based singer and folk song enthusiast presented a fascinating talk about Ralph Vaughan Williams’ folk song collecting which started in Essex in December 1903 and subsequently continued over a number of years which gave the composer the essence of English music that infused his later compositions. Much of his collecting was in East Anglia and there are a number of folk songs and tunes played and sung to him by local singers that can be found woven into many of his classical compositions played regularly worldwide. 

The talk gave the audience a background to that first visit which was to Ingrave, Essex and then focused on a small selection of not just songs sung to the composer but on the singers themselves and the places in Essex where the singers met Vaughan Williams.  Essex band ‘Potiphar’s Apprentices’ then sung and accompanied the songs encouraging their audience to take part in some chorus singing. 

Adieu to Old England; The Sheffield Apprentice; Jessie’s City; Down In Our Village; Three Butchers; New Garden Fields; Tarry Trousers; Sweet William & Van Diemen’s Land were all performed by Potiphar’s Apprentices.  With Sue Cubbin on fiddle and vocals; John Cubbin on banjo, accordion and guitars and Adrian May on Guitar, harmonica and vocals.

There was then an opportunity to look at the various publications that EATMT will be using as part of this project, the opportunity to buy Potiphar’s Apprentices new CD Ballad of Essex and an opportunity to talk to the Project team about how to get involved or to generally to find out more detail about the strands of the Project.

In total, Vaughan Williams collected 116 songs in Essex via 23 singers.  This project aims to identify the songs and tunes collected in the 4 counties of East Anglia (Essex, Suffolk, Norfolk and Cambridgeshire) and provide details about who has researched what and in what format.  The next event related to this project will be in the form of a Research Conference (Sat 26^th November 10am-4pm) which is also the first event where the successful young musicians will come together.  We will also be creating a resource pack for schools and community groups and our findings will be available online towards the end of 2023. If you work in a school or run a community group and would like to be involved in this project, please get in touch.

Keep up to date with how the project develops by visiting:  
www.eatmt.org.uk/vaughan-williams-folk/ or ring 07495 054669 for more details.

Thanks to Red Gables, Colin Lay, Shirley Harry, Nicky Stockman, Rob Stockman, Jake Lee Savage, Sue Cubbin, John Cubbin, Adrian May and Finn Collinson for helping with the set up and running of this event. The delicious cake and biscuits were provided by Amy from Isle of Ely Fine Foods.

Alex Bartholomew, Administrator, EATMT